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All Rise...

Appellate Judge Mac McEntire keeps knockin' but he can't get it.

The Charge

When death comes knocking…AGAIN!

Opening Statement

I must admit that I never saw the first Knock Knock. Gee, I hope I'll be able to
follow all the carefully-plotted continuity and complex mythology.

Facts of the Case

Four friends set out one night on a self-guided tour of some of the most
famous murder sites in Los Angeles, including Sharon Tate, George Reeves, and
the Black Dahlia. They're recording the whole thing along the way with their
home video camera. At the last house on their list, simply known as
"1666," they end up locked inside. The night passes as they try to
find a way out. Turns out they're not alone in there.

The Evidence

The only thing this movie has going for it is the "found footage"
novelty. Sadly, that's no longer novel. The Blair Witch Project is clearly a
template here, complete with having the actors play themselves, with phony
obituaries for them in the end credits no less, all in an attempt to recapture
that brief period of time around Blair Witch's release when people were
wondering if it was real. I hate to make everyone feel old here, but Blair
Witch was more than ten years ago. If you must do the found footage thing,
you've got to come up with something new for it, and not just repeat what others
have done.

The first half of the movie, if not more, is our four heroes driving around
L.A. looking for these infamous sites. It's not until late in the movie when
they get to the creepy house that scares start happening, and those scares are
few and far between. Most of the time inside the house is spent trying to pull
boards off of a window, failing, then trying to pull boards off of another
window, failing, and so on. Very little happens in the movie, and it moves so
slowly, that viewers will be left unfulfilled.

Is anything good here? There's an interesting gender role reversal going on,
where the two male characters are the ones hanging back, saying stuff like,
"Let's just go back to the car, where it's safe," while the two girls
are the ones forging ahead, saying stuff, "What's the matter? Are you
scared?" This back-and-forth ends after they're trapped in the house, which
is too bad, because I would have liked to see more of it.

The picture and audio are about as good as can be expected from the
"shot on ordinary home video equipment" style. Some interviews and a
trailer gallery are it for extras.

Closing Statement

Knock Knock 2 was clearly made by a group of friends over a couple of
nights—maybe even one night—with the tiniest of budgets. I
appreciate that, I really do. But by doing nothing more than following the same
path as another, more famous, more successful movie, it's doomed to be another
forgotten direct-to-DVD snoozer.